Why Does the Concubine Need to Die?

Farewell My Concubine succeeds most thoroughly in breadth, creating a tragic and deeply moving setting brimming with believable injustice and emotional turmoil as the film follows the life of two young boys through the traumatic transitions of twentieth century China.

The film manages to do the unthinkable, editing its nearly three hour running time so tightly and precisely that not a moment seems out of place and not a single image is shot without purpose. All in order to create a Chinese epic that dissects forty years of culture with stunning visual intensity, displaying it to audiences with the rigid clarity of having lived in those strange times.

Farewell My Concubine chronicles the trajectory of two young actors as they rise to fame in Chinese opera, focusing primarily on Dieyi (the youngest of the two) as he is consumed by the transsexual role that he inhabits again and again to achieve his notoriety. The film that begins on the streets wastes no time in establishing its dark and serious nature, either through the forced removal of an eleventh finger or the casual viciousness of the Peking Opera school where boys are beaten for doing wrong or right, scenes of emotional intensity set a tone that penetrates every action of Xiaolou and Dieyi right up until the sharply shot climax at the hands of furious Maoists.

The film’s narrative skillfully touches on the most sensitive of issues; suicide, homosexuality, opium addiction, responsibility for one’s own fate, betrayal, and the nature of art. Ultimately most of the film’s momentum comes from the tortured love triangle that forms when Dieyi falls in love with Xiaolou, despite Xiaolou’s obliviousness to Dieyi’s advances and his heterosexual relationship with a beautiful and strong willed prostitute Juxian. Like the Opera that frames the movie, the torrid lives of the three characters, Xiaolou, Dieyi, and Juxian reveal the deepest of human emotional extremes and ultimately appear to be as tragically inescapable as the staged performances that are given.

Foreign films have never been my forte, too often I find the subtitles distracting, the cultural differences overwhelming, and the limited production values and skill available when working outside of the Hollywood system damning. However I’ve found Farewell My Concubine to be of exceptional quality, sophisticated execution, and deeply symbolic cinematic skill. Ultimately an unabashed look at recent China, the film doesn’t deal in clichés, only authentic and relevant examinations of life, art, society, and love. Don’t Miss Farewell My Concubine.